Songs of old

A couple of weeks ago Carole King was in town campaigning on behalf of Kerry. A friend (well, not a complete friend or she would have told me about this BEFORE rather than after the event) let me know that she had attended, thoroughly enjoying Carole King’s impromptu performance of, you guessed it, “I feel the earth move.” That song is primed for a political campaign.

What a month for old music! Beatles, Rolling Stones, Carole King, Stylistics, Beach Boys – it puts me right back to the years where the record player never rested, working the same groove again and again, and the biggest, the only issue was whether the phone would ring with the voice of THAT person, and, when it became clear that HE (the saintly but somewhat oblivious HE) wasn’t calling that night, then it would be time for another ten repetitions of Don’t Worry Baby or whatever else was there, all ready to tear you apart. Life was so dramatic in its simplicity.

It is touching that so many of these songs did jump the ocean, creating (or maybe just accompanying) havoc in matters of the heart here and there (..and everywhere. Beatles, 1966), stirring up the passions, playing to sweaty palms, facilitating pain and sometimes, in moments of magic, GAIN, as it all then would fall into place, seemingly in an endless moment of pure, uncomplicated, profoundly felt love –before it all crashed and put you right by the record player again to relive your pain for a few more rounds.

Songs of old. Simple words with a strong melodic theme, stuck way in the back of your head until the moment when some odd circumstance prompts you to listen again. And again.